Legal status of Portal Corporation

So I've finally played through a few missions involving Portal Corporation, I've read through the notes about the organization over at Paragonwiki and I've read through the history pages on the official site but, I'm still unclear about Portal Corp. legal status.

Is it only a private business? The history seems to suggest that. Ms. Webb, the wife of the deceased Dr. Webb, sued the other major shareholders for controlling interest in the company in 1998

But realistically--which I know is silly to expect in a game about superheroes--this seems very odd to me.

The Rikti, Axis America, Preatorian Earth and others all demonstrate the threat multiversal invasion and immigration poses. You'd figure the Federal Government or the UN would step in and regulate this technology, treating it in a similar manner to aviation, territorial waters and shipping, radio frequencies or space travel.

You'd figure there'd be customs inspectors or military bases or, better still, a dedicated group of supers that do almost nothing else but watch for signs of multiversal invasion. (Although I know this is exactly what the UN's Vanguard group does.)

Is Portal Corporation purely a private business?

Or is really more like a government/private consortium consisting of lots of abstract university research, some military research and some commercial R&D of useful spinoff technologies but mostly a lot of justifiably paranoid governmental or intergovernmental control? And is that just the Vanguard Arm of the UN?

I ask before I'm doing a little research before I try my hands at writing some fiction here.

Sort of. Portal Corporation is pretty much the reverse of what you describe as your government/private consortium there. It's privately owned and operated, so not dependent on federal funding (though a number of shareholders have ties to the federal government), but also has several ongoing government contracts, the most obvious one of course being maintaining stable connections to Firebase Zulu and a number of Mole Points in the Shadow Shard.

As to customs inspectors and a military base...well, there somewhat is. That's what the guard towers and fortified checkpoint are supposed to be - but the villains always find a way around those, so they don't even bother staffing them anymore.

Okay, so not really. It's a mechanics/lore disconnect. Like their scientists' ability to walk through walls. Anyway, I've used Portal Corp quite extensively in my fiction, so if you want to know anything else, feel free to PM me. Chances are I'll have an answer.

The Vanguard organization actually does have a stake in Praetoria, as well as the Shadow Shard (they ended up playing a pretty heavy role in the Shadow Shard influnced SSA 'Who Will Die?').

Vanguard's modus operandi has always been 'extra-dimensional threats', it just happened that the Rikti were the first widely known and most heavily influential extra-dimensional threat to appear. That caused a lot of the Vanguard's focus to be put specifically on the Rikti.

But yes, Vanguard does look at all trans-dimensional occurrences.

Okay, so this clarifies things. I have some other questions but they are different enough that I'll put them in another thread.

Think S.T.A.R. Labs.

They're essentially a private think-tank with government contracts.

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